[With his HBO documentary series Q: Into the Storm, filmmaker
Cullen Hoback manages to demystify QAnon, exposing the mechanisms that
underpin the right-wing conspiracy theory ] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

MAKING SENSE OF QANON WITH Q: INTO THE STORM’S CULLEN HOBACK  
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Luke Savage
April 19, 2021
Jacobin
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_ With his HBO documentary series Q: Into the Storm, filmmaker Cullen
Hoback manages to demystify QAnon, exposing the mechanisms that
underpin the right-wing conspiracy theory _

QAnon conspiracy supporters attend a protest of coronavirus skeptics
and right-wing extremists in Berlin, Germany, 2020., (Sean Gallup /
Getty Images)

 

AN INTERVIEW WITH
CULLEN HOBACK [[link removed]]

By the end of the Trump era, QAnon had firmly made its way into media
discourse surrounding the Republican Party and the wider issue of
political extremism gestating online. It had also very visibly made
its way offline, playing a pivotal role in the events surrounding the
January 6 storming of the US Capitol.

But it wasn’t always that way. At one time, not very long ago, the
sprawling online conspiracy we now collectively call QAnon was little
more than one of many percolating in the obscure recesses of the
right-wing internet — and filmmaker Cullen Hoback was there from
some of the phenomenon’s earliest days to witness its emergence and
growth.

Both are chronicled in the director’s new film _Q: Into the Storm_
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which debuted on HBO last month and concluded its run the weekend
before last. Getting in close to some of the Q-verse’s most
influential figures, Hoback’s portrait is arguably the most thorough
treatment of QAnon yet — and an example of a high stakes creative
gamble ultimately paying off.

_Jacobin_ spoke to Hoback about _Q: Into the Storm_, his
investigative filmmaking methods, the series’ reception in the
Q-verse, and more. This interview has been edited for clarity.

LS

What most distinguishes _Q: Into the Storm_ from other documentaries
about QAnon, or so it seems to me, is that you began it so early in
the phenomenon’s development — very much a high risk, high reward
type of gamble that ultimately paid big dividends.

Can we travel back in time a bit to the moment you conceived this
project? What did QAnon look like in those early days, and what
inspired you to choose it as a subject?

CH

I jumped on to this story a little less than a year into QAnon, and
what piqued my interest was actually when Reddit banned it. My ears
perked up. I was a pretty heavy Reddit user, so I wondered what this
idea was that was so dangerous and pernicious that it warranted being
banned. Q had kind of been in my periphery at that point, but I
hadn’t looked that closely at it. I had a sense of what it was. But
after the banning, I wondered if this was maybe a sign of things to
come: was this direction that the internet was headed, and might
banning QAnon actually have the opposite of the intended effect? Would
it actually draw people into Q or make them more curious about this
thing that seemed macabre and taboo? These things may draw people to
it, and, in fact, they drew me to it. Here was something that was
getting pushed off of Reddit and I said “Well, what is this
thing?”

In the series I really wanted to chart the transformation that I saw
happening where, in the beginning, it did start out as a kind of
interactive game — and a lot of people treated it like that. But,
over time, it became reality.

So I was brought into it from a digital rights perspective initially,
because I also have a background in digital rights (I made _Terms and
Conditions May Apply,_ which was this exposé on the erosion of
digital privacy). Then, of course, there was the question of who Q
was. That mystery was something that I wanted to unravel because I
thought that unraveling it might bring the whole thing to a
conclusion.

 

LS

What did QAnon look like when it was still a year old and just a few
signs at Trump rallies?

CH

In the beginning, I would say that it’s hard to know exactly how
much people were fully invested in QAnon. I think we were still seeing
a lot of people who were one foot in one foot out: people weren’t
openly, publicly supporting QAnon in the way we know it now. You would
see some Q signs at rallies, but it wasn’t a titanic force in the
culture at that point. You get this from talking with Q’s followers
— those who had come out as QAnon believers — you weren’t sure
if they’d fully bought into it yet or not.

I talked to Q-Tubers — the people who are on YouTube who translate
Q’s message to the masses — sort of the bottom of the information
hierarchy in a way (though there are, of course, the people who
consume the information). I started out with people who had been
mentioned in the Q drops. When I started out with this question of who
Q was — and you see this in this series — I drafted up a list of
possible suspects, but rather than chasing down every one of those
leads, I just thought it would be more efficient to try and go to the
source, which was the site where Q posts. 8chan was the name of it at
the time, and it marketed itself as the edgiest place on the internet
and as this dangerous and scary thing, which is very much their brand.

LS

Having seen QAnon in its earliest stages as well as its later ones,
was there a particular moment or event when you basically thought
“Oh shit, this thing has really taken off…”?

CH

In the series I really wanted to chart the transformation that I saw
happening where, in the beginning, it did start out as a kind of
interactive game — and a lot of people treated it like that. But,
over time, it became reality. In the series we start with more
gamified music and gradually move toward music that’s actually
coming from authentic instrumentation, which was done to reflect the
transformation I felt happened over the course of the three years of
filming.

QAnon meme’d itself into reality. It’s an example of meme magic:
the kind of alchemy of willing something into existence, and I think
what we saw on the sixth [of January] was a lot of people, including
those in Trump’s inner circle, trying to make the Q narrative real.

A Trump supporter holds up a large “Q” sign while waiting in line
at a Trump rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, 2018. (Rick Loomis /
Getty Images)

LS

In many ways what makes the series is you yourself getting in so close
to key figures associated with the movement: notably Ron and Jim
Watkins, and Fredrick Brennan — the founder of 8chan who has since
fallen out with the Watkins’ — but also several of the so-called
Q-Tubers who were instrumental in giving it an audience.

Many of these people are remarkably talkative in front of your camera,
and the level of access you were able to get is pretty extraordinary.
On the other hand, many are also quite obviously unreliable, which I
imagine presents some real challenges.

How exactly were you were able to get into rooms with some of these
people — and why did they seem so keen in many cases to talk to you,
particularly given how obvious it probably was that you weren’t
yourself a Q sympathizer?

 

CH

That’s a great question. I came at this from a position of
neutrality, and I would tell everybody that I was filming with their
opposition and trying to create this holistic picture of what was
happening. Because, even back in 2018, I thought the whole thing was
probably going to grow in scope and scale, and so I would tell people
I was making a historical document. And, because I cared about the
free speech issues as well, sometimes I would have conversations about
that (though I think my interest in that topic is probably greater
than an audience’s interest, so it’s a driving theme in the series
but it’s not what the series is necessarily about).

But in order to be able to move between these sides that hated each
other, I had to set up some ground rules. And, because these are
unreliable narrators, you don’t know if they’re using you as a
channel for information or disinformation. If Ron and Jim (who are the
owner/operators of 8chan, now 8kun), for instance, are saying “Oh,
the FBI is going to come and get Fred tomorrow,” are they being
honest or are they saying something to me they’re hoping I will
relay to Fred so that he flees the country? So one ground rule I had
was to minimize harm.

Another ground rule was that I wouldn’t share information between
the two sides unless they were specific about me doing that. I would
tell them “Look, I’m going to give the other side the same
courtesy that I’m giving you,” and then I just did my best to
listen to those situations and to play the role of a neutral observer.
But, also, everybody knew that I wanted to get to the bottom of who
was behind Q, and I think that when you see where the series ends up,
you wonder why Jim and Ron would have been interested in letting me
into the fold and giving me the kind of access that they did. I think
their motivations shifted over time. In the beginning, they were just
starting to have a falling out with Fredrick Brennan (the creator of
the website where Q was posting) and I think they wanted to have their
side of the story told.

I think they probably enjoyed trolling me a little bit too —
screwing around with the journalist is basically the gold standard for
trolls.

This was before anyone knew who Jim and Ron Watkins were. They
weren’t really major suspects for Q at the time. The shootings that
were tied to 8chan hadn’t happened yet, so hardly anybody even
really knew what it was. I had already been filming with them for
months before any of that happened. I think they probably enjoyed
trolling me a little bit too — screwing around with the journalist
is basically the gold standard for trolls — and I think that they
liked that I had a background in digital rights. They also run a
maximalist free speech website, so I thought they’d have a lot to
say on the subject, though over time I think their motivations for
continuing to participate changed.

I think, the first time I was there, they thought my line of
questioning would be more focused on the free speech side and less on
Q. Then, the second time they agreed to meet with me, their stories
changed significantly: suddenly they knew a lot less about Q, which is
very suspicious, of course. And as the years went by — especially as
we were approaching January 6 and they were really starting to get
access to the seat of power in DC — they wanted it documented, they
wanted people to know the role they were playing.

LS

The series [spoiler alert] ultimately mounts a pretty bold, and
remarkably compelling case, as to the actual identity of Q. Do you
have a sense of how this has been received, both when it comes to the
person in question and throughout the Q-verse more generally?

CH

I think a lot of the Q-Tubers have gone on the attack. Their reviews
have been kind of funny. I think the Watkins’ appreciated the
artistic construction of the project and felt that, for better or
worse, I gave them a fair shake (although they have to debate the
conclusion that I draw at the end as to who’s behind it for reasons
of self-preservation). One of the things that’s been fascinating is
that I think anons in particular — people who are old chan users and
not necessarily QAnons — found that the series’ analysis of what
goes on in the chans and the representation of that ecosystem was
pretty representative.

And I’ve heard from a number of people now on Twitter — many, many
people actually — that, for the first time in a long time, people
who have QAnon family members or friends have opened up a line of
communication. I’ve heard this from some who are QAnon believers as
well, so it’s kind of working in both directions. And I think that
that can be attributed to a number of things: this project really
aimed to demystify the mechanics of QAnon and show the forces that are
behind it — and for those who were following Q and for those who
were wondering _why_ they were following Q, it answered a lot of
questions and it took away a lot of its power. I think it softened
some perspectives and helped give people a common language and some
things to discuss moving forward — among them, these shifty
characters who were basically trolling the hell out of them.

LS

In terms of how the film has been critically received, there’s been
praise from journalists and researchers who study QAnon, but
also some
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a few places — the crux of which is basically that you give
Q-sympathizers airtime and that may end up in some way aiding their
project. How do you respond to these criticisms of your investigative
methods?

CH

I think now that the whole series is out, we can see that those
concerns were misguided. And the proof is in the pudding, right? It
was a little challenging at first, trying to get around it because
these more negative reviews sort of set the table and then you might
have other critics watch it and think “Oh wow, this really broke the
whole thing down and these reviews are totally at odds with the
experience that I just had watching this.”

I was perplexed. I expected there to be some pushback because here was
this person coming out of the woodworks who none of them really knew.
There were a lot of people who had built careers as experts on QAnon
— there’s a whole ecosystem that’s emerged on the anti side as
well — and to some extent, I was jumping into their playground, at
least in their minds (even though I had been quietly working behind
the scenes on this series for many years). So that was a bit of a
challenge.

A woman wearing a QAnon sweatshirt during a pro-Trump rally in
Ronkonkoma, New York, 2020. (Stephanie Keith / Getty Images)

I think part of it was also that mainstream outlets found it
impossible to get access to any of these sources. The people who are
featured in this documentary wouldn’t have talked to them. Every
journal on the planet, for example, tried to get a hold of Ron
Watkins, and he would just refuse to talk to them. I think part of why
they agreed to talk to me is that I produced this whole thing
independently. HBO came on at a very late stage in September, 2020.
This thing mostly involved me running around with cameras and audio
equipment, and I think they appreciated that DIY approach, which was
part of what helped me get access as well.

Another part of it is that a lot of these outlets had already picked
their angles. They’d written stories about what they thought and
chosen what they could write about, which was stuff like the fallout
of QAnon — which is an important thing to write about, certainly —
and the effect that it’s having on families and whatnot. But this
project was about something different. It was about breaking it all
down and showing the actual forces that were behind it, and I don’t
think showing people doing bad things perpetuates them. I think the
antiseptic of sunlight can be quite effective, and there’s a lot of
historical evidence to show that revealing the mechanics of something
is one of the best ways to reveal it for what it is (rather than
saying that it’s dangerous and to look the other way).

 

LS

Even though your film pinpoints a particular figure as a potential
source for Q’s posts, at least over the past couple of years, the
actual center of QAnon — the main causal force behind it — seems
really difficult to pin down. Viewed holistically the whole thing is
such an intricate web of earnest belief, irony-poisoning, online
misinformation run amok, straight up nihilism, grift, etc. You
mentioned a few moments ago that, in its earlier stages, it was almost
a role-playing game and to some extent later assumed a more serious
character. In some ways it’s also merely a continuation, a
hodgepodge, of existing right-wing conspiracy theories.

So as someone who spent years observing it up close, how do you
account for the Q-phenomenon among its influencers and its
rank-and-file supporters? Where, ultimately, did it come from — that
is, beyond the literal sources that you speculate about in the series?

CH

There’s also been a lot of great reporting done on that subject, and
to that point, a lot of the journalists and researchers who have been
covering Q have mentioned to me that they’ve appreciated having a
lot of the holes filled and seeing a lot of what was going on behind
the scenes. I’ve talked with them at length about QAnon’s origins,
the nature of belief, and what it is that draws in QAnons.

I was kind of an anchor or maybe a grounding force. Because I think
what happens is that when QAnon draws in people they become really
absorbed in the worldview, and then there’s both an emotional and a
social toll.

I’ve personally talked to QAnons themselves for countless hours:
oftentimes they would call me in the middle of the night just to talk,
and I found over time that for a lot of them, I was kind of an anchor
or maybe a grounding force. Because I think what happens is that when
QAnon draws in people they become really absorbed in the worldview,
and then there’s both an emotional and a social toll. It drives a
wedge between friends and family, and then they find themselves rather
isolated, turning more and more toward a community of other people who
are online.

What draws people to QAnon? I think it’s obviously a mixture of
things. But QAnon gives people a sense that all the evils in the world
can be summed up in a really easy way. It creates this black-and-white
heaven and hell — this all or nothing mentality. It’s a super
reductive oversimplification that tries to address things that are
really hard to understand. The evils surrounding the banking crisis,
for example, aren’t easy to understand (I’ve watched the _Big
Short_ five times, and I still struggle to understand the exact
mechanics of what went down there!). I look at the Iraq War and the
lie that was told to draw us into that, which ultimately cost
trillions of dollars and God knows how many lives lost.

So people start turning away when they see these kinds of evils
happening. They start turning away from expertise. They start turning
away from these institutions and looking to other sources. The
banality of evil isn’t sexy. It’s hard to understand and this just
kind of repackages it in a way that’s easy to follow. There also
have to be existing fissures in American society for something like
this to work.

I think we’re kind of lacking a common narrative right now as well,
and so people are looking for a story they can believe in. And it’s
one of the oldest stories in the world (i.e., one that explains the
bad things in the world) — which is convenient because it allows Q
to paint anyone they want as a bad guy. It’s complete nonsense most
of the time, but it becomes a powerful weapon. It speaks to a
religious desire, too, that a lot of people have. Religious thinking
and the kind of thinking that draws someone into Q are similar. QAnon
just takes heaven and hell and puts them right here on earth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cullen Hoback is an American filmmaker, film producer, and director.
His work includes Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013) and the HBO
miniseries Q: Into the Storm (2021).

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Luke Savage is a staff writer at Jacobin.

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